Good night Chesty wherever you are. Semper Fi ...
Posted on 05/24/2006 12:55:11 PM PDT by Graybeard58
No military service records can be found for him
DUNLAP - With only five other men in U.S. history being awarded the Purple Heart eight times over, Theodore C. Bantis of Dunlap would be the only Marine known to have earned such distinction.
He would be one of only 362 Marines to receive the rare and coveted Navy Cross during what he lists as three full combat tours in Vietnam before retiring after 30 years as a colonel.
Impressive and honorable as it may appear, the medals and the rank Bantis claims all appear to be lies. He never spent a day as a Marine in his life.
"It really denigrates the whole idea for the awards," said Tom Maher, a local Marine who served in Vietnam around the same time Bantis claims.
Maher said he first approached Bantis about three years ago during a Memorial Day event in Peoria.
"I told him, 'You do realize you're wearing your awards incorrectly?' He just turned and walked away," Maher said Monday. "I never could find out if he was telling the truth or not."
Others also now wonder.
The U.S. Marine Corps Records Branch in Quantico, Va., which has a database of more than 2.8 million men and women, lists no Theodore Bantis as ever serving in the Marine Corps, according to 1st Lt. Rob Dolan, a Marine spokesman.
Through it all, Bantis maintains his awards are genuine.
"I'm a very private man, and I'd prefer to keep it that way," Bantis said Monday from his rural home. "That was more than 30 years ago. I don't like to talk about it."
However, Doug Sterner, who is considered the foremost authority on military awards today and runs homeofheroes.com, a Web site that honors heroes, said Bantis never earned the awards he's pinned on himself.
"He's a fake. I can verify for you that Mr. Bantis is not a recipient of the Navy Cross," said Sterner, who was commissioned by the U.S. Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and works closely with Marine Corps History Division, to generate what is the only existing database of Navy Cross recipients.
Sterner further notes Bantis wears the Navy Cross incorrectly. Photos of Bantis at various events show he has added a silver "V" pin on the ribbon, denoting "valor," but the Navy Cross is only awarded for valor and is never worn with the pin.
But Bantis, 59, has led his family, friends, veterans and others in the community to believe otherwise. For how long or why is unclear.
Over at least the last few years, he's made visits to local Marine Corps functions, military funerals, fund-raisers and Memorial Day events under the guise of being a retired colonel. Bantis helped the Kiwanis Club gather soccer balls to send to Iraqi children and is on the Peoria-based Marine reserve unit's e-mail list. He also spoke about 9-11 victims to an audience at Illinois Central College in Peoria on Sept. 11, 2004, in full military regalia.
"He might do great things for kids, but if he did what is being alleged - wearing the uniform and medals - that's a totally different ball game," said 1st Sgt. Casey Samborski, a member of Company C, 6th Engineering Battalion, who along with other Marines are disturbed and angered at the idea of Bantis posing as a hero.
Still, there's nothing that shows Bantis ever used his fictional rank for profit, and he's never filed for any veteran's benefits.
Regardless, there are federal laws against impersonating military officers and wearing medals that were never earned. In Illinois, a new law takes effect Jan. 1, 2007, making the act a petty offense.
While Maher and other Marines shared their suspicions among themselves, it wasn't until Bantis attended an annual Marine Corps birthday ball six months ago that the apparent lie started to catch up with him. There, a picture caught Bantis donning the medals.
A biography he provided for the event included a long list of military honors and claims that he held command in special operations and intelligence groups. It also said he graduated from Pepperdine University in Los Angeles with a master's degree in education. However, an official with the school's alumni association said Tuesday she has no record of Bantis attending the school.
The biography and picture were sent to Sterner, who has referred the case to FBI Special Agent Thomas Cottone Jr., who has investigated more than 100 cases of military fraud. He says incidents of military impersonation are on the rise.
A Pennsylvania man was charged this month by federal authorities for impersonating a lieutenant colonel who had been awarded the Navy Cross, and the Silver and Bronze stars. The man actually had served only three years in the Air Force as a plumbing specialist. In 1995, an Illinois judge, who later resigned his post, lied for years about receiving two Medals of Honor, the nation's highest military award. He could not be prosecuted, though, because he was never seen wearing the medals.
As far as Bantis' personal life, little is known. He moved to Peoria from Spokane, Wash., about six years ago and was married, according to Journal Star archives that listed a filed marriage certificate. He also claims to be the chief operating officer of a business called the Adeptus Corp., although no information could be found about the company.
Bantis claims his military records are sealed because of his work with naval intelligence.
But Cottone rebuts Bantis' statement saying his name would still appear in the Marine Corps' records.
Sterner adds that even the most classified who have earned honors such as the Navy Cross will receive recognition that is publicly available.
"They are desecrating everybody who ever served in the military, who ever was wounded or lost a limb in battle and certainly those who gave their lives," Cottone said. "They are stealing the respect and admiration that belongs to those who have actually served."
Thats the guy. CNO. I remember also he was well respected.
I've known several pencil-necked geek types who could easily pass themselves off as a USAF Major. Fighter pilot, though, isn't so easy. There's just something about them "blow-pipe" jocks!
The newly minted female butter bar (right out of the Air Force Academy)...told me I seem liked the nicest nonegocentric, fighter pilot she'd ever met...
HA! :-)
"personally, would be upset if it was an actual medal for valor"
No, it was for not paying attention to what was going on around me while yelling on the radio and looking at a map.
Until his health started to fail him, these activities kept him quite busy and active in the Medal of Honor Society.
(...gotta tell y'all - sitting in his study and being able to handle and hold some of his mementos and awards gave this old Marine Corps Corporal quite a chill...and thrill)
Alas … I have the dubious distinction of being one of the few sailors that served during the Vietnam war that was NOT a Navy SEAL /sarc
Me, I was cross-trained as a Ranger, SEAL and Air Force Para and sent on spec ops missions into Cambodia so black and so secret there is no record of me anywhere, not even my MOH. My service record as a plain ol' tanker is a dummy planted by the CIA. I'll never forget Christmas in Cambodia, listening to Richard Nixon deny I was there. Seared, seared into my memory it is! :-)
My guess is there is an error on the name. A major general is too easy to check out. The fruads usually claim they were lower ranks. Also, the guy in the picture actually looks pretty hard corps.
The "very private man" who "doesn't like to talk about it" appears at public functions regularly, in uniform, medals and all..
ping about a scumbag faker.
LIVINGSTON, JAMES E.
"How's your investigation going so far?"
Peachy, dude.
I bet that was just before you showed her your 3-point landing. ;-)
"...to have won two Medals of Honor when virtually no one has..."
Since the Medal of Honor is usually awarded posthumously, I can't imagine a person desiring two such awards. I wonder if Audie Murphy got two?
"Wasn't there an Admiral in the 90's that killed himself when it was discovered that he wore an undeserved medal?"
I can't dredge up his full name but it was an Admiral Boo... and I believe the claim was untrue - he, in fact, HAD earned the medal. He killed himself because of the taint on his honor.
"There seemed to be a lot of that going on in the 1990's. My own personal experience had to do with a local paper obituary that stated the recently deceased was a career Navy man and Navy SEAL. They listed his awards, one of which was the Navy Cross. I e-mailed the curator of the Navy/Seal Museum in Fort Pierce, FL with the news, knowing, if they didn't already know, they would want to know they had just lost a Navy Cross recipient. There were very few of them in the Vietnam UDT/Navy SEAL units. A day later I get a phone call from the curator of the museum James Watson who informed me he knew all the Navy Cross people in the SEAL teams (from that era) and the guy in the obituary wasn't one of them, in fact hadn't served with the teams. Called the newspaper and spoke to the obituary writer, he was apologetic, told me he had been flummoxed by the family and wanted to know if perhaps he should contact them ... we decided to let it go and not embarrass the family."
===
I was working in VN in the mid-90's. I guess you could call it my third tour but in the 90's I was getting decent money since I was working for a private company. I hung out at a local watering hole and met a guy who claimed to have been a Navy Seal and a former POW, Hanoi Hilton and all that. When I got transferred back to the the U.S., I happened to mention to a friend who it seems was the then current President of the retired SEALS that I had met a friend of his. I related the story, the circumstances and name and he told me..."the SEALS have NEVER left anyone behind. There has NEVER been a SEAL POW and there never will be." The next day, I received a call from another SEAL asking if they could have some info on how to contact this guy so they could "pay him a visit."
Sort of like -- it's not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Buenos noches.
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